People have been asking us for years when we’d be getting shirts and other cool stuff out the door so they can represent their love for our awesome community. The time has finally come to unveil the new store and we’re excited to have both the original Gamers With Jobs t-shirt along with the first winner from our design contest back in … wow, that’s a long time ago.

One of our absolute favorites was one of many designs submitted by community member Fredrik Skarstedt (Fredrik_S). He had a bunch of awesome ideas but his Friend Me Up graphic design was particularly inspired. We’re very pleased to offer a regular t-shirt in multiple colors and babydoll versions for the ladies!

This is only the beginning. Over the next few months we plan to release new stuff based on what you guys want and some of our other winning designs. Big thanks to Cleveland Printwear for making our awesome swag!

*note* We have folks outside the US and Canada covered too, check out the international order form on the site.

Since launching Gamers With Jobs Radio five years ago we've been treated to some amazing music by Ian Dorsch. His tunes have been a staple of the GWJ podcasts and had a big hand in defining them long before even we knew what they were all about. Lucky for us, we finally have a way to give back to Ian in thanks for all the excellent work he's done for the show and the community. His company, Willow Tree Audioworks, has released some of the very best tracks he's laid down over the years along with an extended version of our newest opening song.

A note from Ian: It is fitting that my first release via this site should be a compilation of music from Gamers With Jobs podcasts. When I began to work with Russ Pitts on GWJ Radio, I had largely forgotten what it was like to make music for fun. In a significant way, collaborating with Russ and Shawn and interacting with the fantastic community at GWJ helped me to rediscover why I became a musician in the first place. Thanks, guys. This is for you.

My personal favorite has got to be "Podunk Stomp" by a landslide. No man, woman or child can listen to it and not want to leave all their earthly possessions behind, move into the woods and bang rocks together all day. Do yourself a favor, hit the website and download the album Ian has put together for the community. In return for this musical bounty, please donate whatever you can afford so he knows we love him and he'll continue to rock our faces off for years to come.

You may have noticed some new images along the left side of the page recently. In our continuing effort to offer ways to support the site without punching monkeys or dodging a minefield of text link ads, we've partnered with a few services that kick a little something our way whenever you happen to make a purchase.

GoG.com was the first and continues to be a great place for old PC games completely free of DRM and tweaked to work on modern systems. Games like Divine Divinity, Psychonauts, Commandos 2 & 3 and Beyond Good & Evil are all $10 bucks and totally worth having in your collection. If you click the link to their site and sign up, we'll receive a small credit for everything you buy over the next 12 months.

Stardock's Impulse digital download service offers a ton of new PC games and a great software client to boot. It's easy to backup games you've downloaded and even better, you don't have to be online to play single player titles. It keeps your software up to date and their download speeds are super fast. If you're already a customer and have the Impulse software on your computer, all you need to to is uninstall it and then reinstall with the GWJ affiliate setup file. After that, any game you buy through the Impulse client will kick a small credit our way. Your games are tied to your login, so the process should be painless.

They have a huge Thanksgiving sale on now, so make sure you check them out!

Amazon is this little site that sells various things online. Maybe you've heard of them? We'll be linking to console games in The Week Ahead that take you to Amazon in case you wanted to buy them online. An extra cool feature is that handy search box on the left side of the page. Anything you buy on Amazon's page after using that search nets us a little something without costing you a dime provided you buy something within that browser session.

We also have the GWJ iPhone app for your iPhone and iPod Touch. Bonus content and (soon) we'll have all of the old episodes available for streaming!

Thanks for your patience, hopefully none of this is too offensive or at least easily ignored if that's how you're leaning. Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers, eat lots of food and be sure to pass out responsibly.

You probably notice a few updates to the site today. We wanted to do more to promote the awesome writing our staff produce here, which kicked off a bunch of layout tweaks. Here are the patch notes, for lack of a better term:

- The top area of the site now showcases the latest "feature" articles and rotates some classics into the mix in case folks missed them.

- The main page and article areas are now running at a fixed 1024 pixel width to save us the nightmare of trying to make things look nice at the old variable width style. This is going to give us more flexibility as we tweak the site.

- The forums have been left as a variable width, because it just works better that way. We've also changed it so the first post of a thread doesn't show up at the top of each page, but it's still easy to refer to it if needed.

- Secret back end updates have also been made and some small changes to the front page article layouts. I'd like to wish fond farewell to the article category icon; enjoy your imitation Rolex watch and fruit basket as you step into retirement.

That's all for now! If you find any bugs, let us know in the comments.

The live show is done and the winners of the 2009 GWJ donation drive have been selected. Congratulations to all of our lucky winners this year and thank you very much for all your support! As mentioned in the original thread, the winners pick their prize in order of names drawn. If a winner decides he/she does not want a prize, we also drew a couple alternates just in case.

Bad Mojo was even listening in to the live show and heard his name called. Awesome.

Bad Mojo (Video Card)
Fripper (PSP Go)
Johny Polite (Sander Cohen Statue)
Snooglebum (Free Game)
Zyblorg (Free Game)
MyBrainHz (SOAP)
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Runner ups: Sparhawk and Merzy

Make your choices known in the thread below (in order please) and PM Elysium your shipping information or email it to elysium@gamerswithjobs.com.

*UPDATE* List has been updated!

What you'll find here after the break is our final list of donors for the site this year. There are plenty of names omitted because we don't have forum accounts associated with them. If you're not on this list and you should be, make sure you email elysium@gamerswithjobs.com with your forum name, Paypal email and donation amount so we can make sure you're entered into the draw this weekend! Deadline is Saturday at 11:59AM CST. After that, you're out of luck! We'll still make sure you get your tag, of course.

The prize drawing will be done on Saturday at 8PM EST, 7PM CST during our live GWJ Conference Call podcast. Keep an eye on the front page for a link to our USteam feed as we get closer to the date. For a refresher on our awesome prizes, hit the main donation page.

Our gratefulness to all of you for your support knows no bounds. Brace yourself for one hell of a list.

Special Thanks to our 500th donor for 2009 **Gumbie**
Nice work being just a little extra awesome.

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The list of donors you will see below the bump is two things -- 1) very very long and 2) finally up to date as of this afternoon. It is bursting at the seams with people who I would describe in congressional testimony using the flowery language of hyperbole. These people, these guardians of the GWJ nation, they’re the people you can thank over the year to come for keeping the lights on and the spotlight focused tightly on the dancing bear — which is really just Julian in a bear suit, but I digress.

Our annual donation drive ends, Monday October 5, at 11:59. If you haven't donated and would like to, please see here for details on how to have your name included in our annual prize giveaway.

I bring this up because there are some pretty awesome prizes associated with being a donor -- including a highly collectible and signed Bioshock figurine, a console or PC upgrade and some surprisingly awesome soap -- to say nothing of this being your one opportunity every year to get a fancy little icon under your name. I don’t want to say that these icons will be the fashion accessory sweeping Milan in the fall, so I will simply imply it in typically irresponsible fashion.

Back to the list for a second. As I mentioned it is long. In fact, the total number of donors to date is around the 460 mark. I realize it would be incredibly difficult to break the 500 mark this year, which has been one of our long-standing and largely unattainable goals, but not necessarily impossible. I’m just sayin’.

But, as we wind down this drive, I want to take a minute and offer a few thank yous.

*Update* As of 10:00 CST our drive count is at 485 donors. A brief special thank you will go out to our 500th donor should we reach that goal. Also many of you sent me personal notes mentioning that you were unable to donate this year due to a variety of difficulties, or that you wished you could donate more. Thank you so much for even thinking of us, and do not despair in the least if times are tough. Ideally this is a time when our community should be there for you.

Did you know there's only 110 of these Sander Cohen (Bioshock) figures in the whole world? Thanks to Ken Levine, you could win it and support the site at the same time, guaranteeing yourself a place in the annals of geek history. All you gotta do is hit the donation thread for details and we'll make sure you get your shiny new tag and have you entered for a chance to win a new console of your choice, free games and more.

Speaking of tags, you can read on to see a list of all our awesome donors so far! We have more tags to do, we'll drop another update once we're totally caught up. Thanks for all the support so far, GWJ wouldn't be here without you.

*UPDATE* 50 more names added! More to do.

Big thanks for all the support so far! We're way (way) behind on tagging thanks to a technical snafu on Elysium's machine. This "technical snafu" could be code for "playing WoW in my underwear" but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief ... for now. We will get your tags in place soon and want to thank you all for your support and patience. In case you missed it, our once a year donation drive is happening through the month of September. It's your chance to help us carry on with the business of running the awesome daily content on the site and the weekly podcast. Did I mention our awesome donor prize draw? There are fabulous prizes to be won including a console of your choice and a very (very) limited edition Bioshock figure signed by our good pal Ken Levine. Hit the main post for all the details!

Read on for a list of donors we've tagged so far. Like I said, we have a ton left to do, so don't worry if you're not on here yet. Thanks again for all the good thoughts and donations everyone! It means a lot.

Gamers With Jobs is, first and foremost, a user supported site. Which is why between now and October 2 we will be camped out on your virtual doorstep wearing dark glasses and shaking a coffee cup full of seed-coin asking for your continued and crucial support in helping us keep the lights on and the hamsters turning in their exercise wheels. Your donation goes to providing the materials, the equipment and the financial ability to bring you the content that teases your eyes and tickles your ears every single week. While we hope you feel like the work we do is valuable, we also know that a prize giveaway or two never hurt anybody. This year is no different.

We are proud to roll out the annual donation drive and prize give away featuring a familiar option at the Grand Prize spot --

Supporting the site is as simple as clicking the make a donation link on the sidebar or sending your donation through Paypal to elysium@gamerswithjobs.com. Every donation of $10 or more is eligible for an entry into our giveaway -- additional entries are added for larger donations. See after the bump for more details.

You can also send a check to:

GWJ Donation Drive
Attn: Sean
PO Box 177
Savage, MN 55378

IMPORTANT - READ THIS: Being involved in the donation drive giveaway and getting your forum icon is a two step process - you must send a separate e-mail to elysium@gamerswithjobs.com with the subject Donation Info. You must include your forum name, the name under which you donated if it is different and the amount donated. Icons and donation information will be updated periodically, and there may be a delay between submitting your donation and receiving confirmation and a new icon.

Read on for specific details, rules and regulations including our full prize give away list and one of the coolest prizes we've ever offered.